


Between The Shadow And The Soul

by wreathed



Category: Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Adultery, Alcohol, Angst, Arguing, Banter, Bedroom Sex, Blow Jobs, Break Up, Cars, Chaptered, Cheating, Closet Sex, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Drunk Driving, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Hospital, Hotel Sex, Hotels, Jealousy, M/M, Masturbation, Morning Sex, Multi, Outdoor Sex, Phone Sex, Porn, Porn With Plot, Rimming, Rough Sex, Secret Relationship, Sex, Smoking, Threesome - M/M/M, Voyeurism, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-29
Updated: 2009-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:49:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Begins in 2002 and set over the duration of <i>Top Gear</i> since then. It takes James, Jeremy and Richard years, far too many years of fucking around and fucking things up, for them to work it all out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by tigertale7 and _breathtaken. Title taken from the Stephen Tapscott translation of Pablo Neruda's 'Sonnet XVII'.

On this cold November day the car park is grey, gritty, unforgiving; the studio hangar seems anchored to a determined, wistful tundra. Richard, standing near a corner of the car park and behind some plastic wheelie bins, kicks at a stone and sighs. His breath mists in the cool air.

"'s going well so far, today," says Jeremy, who is standing beside him and leaning against the wall, one foot bent back, the other on the ground. He and Richard are out here for a cigarette. Richard hasn’t quite _clicked_ yet with Jeremy or Jason Dawe, they just talk about the cars on camera and off it and hope that that's enough, but Dawe is becoming vaguely irritating as Jeremy is becoming more intriguing. Jeremy gets on well with Dawe, most of the time. But Dawe doesn’t smoke and so does not join Jeremy and Richard when they are skulking outside and waiting for the next event.

"Yeah." Richard hates how hearty he sounds. Jeremy is still a relatively new acquaintance and Richard has always been keen to impress anyone he meets, but making conversation somehow seems difficult today. "Don't think I'll ever get used to all this."

"This?" asks Jeremy, gesturing at their mundane surroundings. He looks down at Richard, his expression unintentionally condescending due to the tilt of his head.

Richard can barely stand the schooled indifference, the feeling in the bottom of his gut that Jeremy knows something he doesn't. He glares upwards, petulant. "Sitting in supercars. Being on the BBC. Crashing into things on purpose."

"It's alright, I suppose." Richard, feeling fighty and like he could get away with almost anything, wants to punch Jeremy for seeming so nonchalant. What makes him tick seems initially obvious, and then totally inaccessible, and Richard wants to succeed in figuring him out.

"What are we filming next?"

"Reasonably priced car," Richard replies. "Well, you are." Their words are sparse; it feels as if they are saving their voices for the studio. He can not make eye-contact, because of the height difference and something else; Jeremy's movements look near-nervous as his gaze shifts from tree to tree.

"Shit," Richard mutters, his hands returning fruitless from the pockets of his jeans. "You got a lighter or something?"

The last thing Richard expects is for Jeremy to look at him - actually look at him, with an absolute determination in his eyes - and in one fluid movement push him up against metal, hold him down by the hipbones, and kiss him, hard.

The complete change in tempo catches Richard off-guard, and he gasps heavily, feeling almost winded. There is a low, red thrum in his ears and it's like he's suddenly submerged in choppy, silent water; waves lap against him as Jeremy slides his grip over Richard's thigh.

Jeremy's wedding ring grazes against the skin under Richard's shirt. It's something that he does not wish to be reminded of. It's not been that long at all since Richard tied the knot himself and so he can not ask Jeremy to remove his band any more than Richard can take off his own. That thought should stop this whole thing, he feels, but it doesn't. They kiss again instead, everything a flesh-coloured blur too close for focus.

Their movements are not tentative because there isn't time for that, because Jeremy seems the type that has always wanted to run before he can walk, because if they kiss hard enough they can forget about the women and children that are waiting for them at home and the crew standing _just inside_ and the tangible weirdness of the entire, unprecedented situation.

There's still no proper sound as Jeremy's large hands roughly pull down Richard's jeans. Jeremy's body seems to curve into Richard's; half-slumping over the smaller man. The kissing stops for the moment, but without the contact Richard can see too much too close; he shuts his eyes, only wanting to feel.

Jeremy grabs Richard's cock; the air is cold, but Jeremy's hand is warmer than it should be on what is now hardened flesh, his grip firm enough to almost hurt. The bitter, salty wind and the sharp, spicy heat has Richard biting down on his bottom lip.

Jeremy is focusing on the corrugated metal, and Richard is shocked by a sudden desire to force - hell, to fuck - some sense into him. He senses Jeremy's own erection, untouched, near the outer side of his left leg, but he is pinned tightly in place; he can't move, even though he wants to shift to once more feel the shape of Jeremy' lips against his own. Richard feels his concentration and consciousness slipping as he murmur-moans from the sliding of Jeremy's knuckles and the corresponding movement of his hand. He feels detached, despite his best efforts; he wants to throw himself deeply into this, but also wants to run far away. Thoughts rush through Richard's mind, a common theme within their litany of _what the fuck are we doing, what the fuck is this, fuck, fuck, fuck_ and he can't decide if he wants to keep his eyes closed or open. There's finally sound he can hear above the wind - Jeremy's hand sliding slickly on his cock.

Richard is astonished by the intensity. It's breathy and dirty and male _and that shouldn't be a good thing_. He's had it good before, of course he has, but this has an extra layer of something he'd never...

Never? Richard remembers the man he'd met only a few times and mistakenly, unfairly kissed once. The feeling is so similar to right here and now with Jeremy, that there is an additional jab to his heart that has nothing to do with Jeremy's ministrations.

And then he is falling, his hips jerking upwards as the back of his head falls against the metal wall. Jeremy says something to Richard as he wipes his hand awkwardly on the inside of Richard's boxers, but he walks steadily away before Richard can ask him to repeat himself. Jeremy hasn't waited around for reciprocation. Richard never finds out what his words were.

* * *

"It's too quiet in here," Jeremy says to Richard after they've finished shooting for the day and are watching cameras being packed away. "Maybe next series we could get a _proper_ audience in or something."

Richard nods, looking around the room with large eyes. "If we get another series," he replies quietly.

"We'll get another series. Or I'll eat my own hair." Jeremy smiles smugly, looking down at Richard once more, and Richard realises that height difference is never going to change.

Nonetheless, Richard laughs, raises an eyebrow. "Empty threat. You're losing your hair anyway, old man." He imagines the hangar filled with people - blokes, obviously they'd be mostly blokes, but maybe there'd be a few nice-looking girls - and wonders how long it would be before Jeremy would poke fun at him in front of them to show him up.

If they get a second run, he hopes that Andy will consider the idea.

* * *

They have just four more episodes to film. Richard tries to put the fact that Jeremy has just given him a quick, seedy wank behind the proverbial bikesheds to the back of his mind, dismiss it as a freak event or a strange, failed experiment. It troubles him that it feels like a natural progression.

At the end of series one of God-knew-how-many, Richard tells everyone who's at the wrap party that Mindy is pregnant for a second time. Beer bottles clink together, and he thinks of babies and all that they entail; he knows about the fragility of something new and about sleep only coming in short, torrid bouts. About demands and guilt.

What has built up between Richard and Jeremy is swiftly halted by mutual, silent agreement, and any threat of a reprise disappears. Jeremy's "congratulations, Hammond" does not sound hollow to Richard's ears, and neither dwell for long on something that they have not found they can easily analyse.

Then Series Two brings a new presenter, and Richard can't help looking. Even when he sees Jeremy catching him out.

* * *

Cast and crew are toasting each other in the cosy confines of Dunsfold's nearest pub after the studio filming of series two, episode one of _Top Gear_. James soon joins the table where Jeremy and Richard are sitting and gratefully accepts the beer that Richard hands to him. He feels less out-of-place with Richard here to grin and laugh with him.

"Did you have to bounce up and down on my Bentley, Clarkson?" James asks.

Richard butts in, speaking for Jeremy. "Should have seen him the first time he chatted with Dawe on camera. Lots of manly pats on the shoulder. You'll get used to it."

" _He_ clearly didn't," James replies. "Left after one series."

Richard doesn't point out that he was actually sacked. It would spoil the joke. "Couldn't take the sexual harassment."

James notices the heavy pause and takes in the slightly surprised glance that Jeremy directs at Richard, but convinces himself that he imagined it straight afterwards. He's still staring at the fixed floor, colour in his cheeks, as Richard wanders off to the bar.

"James," barks Jeremy, "Significant other?"

"Um. Sarah. She's nice. We've dated for, what, a couple of years now?" James doesn't know why he's framing his startled words as a question. "You should meet her sometime. She works for-" he breaks off. "Hang on. Were you just trying to find out if I'm-?"

Jeremy shrugs. "You seem like the type."

"No-one's ever made _that_ joke before, Clarkson," says James sardonically. "Your originality takes my breath away."

"Sorry, mate." Jeremy claps him on the upper back, the pressure remaining with surprising clarity as Jeremy leans over him to talk to a passing soundman. The casual 'mate' makes James think - like so many things tend to do - of Richard, but Jeremy is not Richard. James doesn't like the feel of Jeremy's wide fingers pressing into his suddenly-shy skin, but it seems rude to shrink away from such an innocent, friendly gesture, and so James sits on his hands to try and stop the twitches that are running through his fingers.

He has a few pints, and gets into an argument with Jeremy about what constitutes real beer as he's doing so. He watches Richard, swallowing hard whenever he casually meets his gaze. He makes sure that he doesn't drink too much, because he does not want to let his guard down this early on in the game. He wants to carry on with this presenting lark, wants to stick at it in his own dogged, quiet way.

James doesn't watch Jeremy for too long though, doesn't want to, doesn't trust himself to, because Jeremy might be boorish and brash and happily married but one thing Jeremy's not is stupid.

James will save the watching for another day, when they have worn the edges off each other and are less mindful of what a glance can create and destroy.

* * *

It is an odd time. They know that how they interact is important in making the show work but they haven't quite worked out what their roles are yet.

They build upon strange nuances. James can't help but admire Jeremy, this new force of nature that has entered his life in a whirlwind of deliberately-fatuous opinionated journalism and (as James perceives it) a misplaced excessive penchant for Formula One. He sometimes sees Jeremy and Richard discussing Cool Wall tactics close together and irrationally wonders if he really was the candidate most wanted, even as a third series comes and goes without an incident of sacking and a 'sorry, Mr May, but it just wasn’t right'.

Once, he catches them on their phones simultaneously, speaking, by the sound of it, to their respective wives. Neither look at each other, but both claw at their hair with the same agitated movement. It's not quite a realisation that James experiences there and then, but it's something close to that and it's not something he wants to confront Richard about, not something he even wants to touch upon. So he doesn't.

Asking Jeremy never even occurs to him.

* * *

Richard can remember what James looked like with short hair - proper short hair - and decides that having it longer suits him better. He remembers James with short hair quite often. He remembers late at night what the strands had felt like, slipping through his dry and shaking fingers.

There are some things worth trying for, Richard decides, however many reasons there are against you doing so.

* * *

It's another pub outing for the _Top Gear_ team, this time in London. A television mounted on the wall blares out sports to an eager audience. James, Jeremy and Richard are not drunk, but getting there, and Richard has been talking to James for too much of the night.

They have been talking about concepts. Concept cars; challenge concepts; bordering on challenging concepts sometimes, revealing things they shouldn't.

They're standing outside. Richard has just touched James's shoulder for the third time.

"James. Ever think about things you wish you could forget?"

James moves like he wants the taxi to arrive, wants to get away from Richard and this conversation. "Of course."

"So, er, you want to forget about...?" Richard trails off.

James seems puzzled until Richard sees realisation hit. "Have I ever given any indication of wanting to discuss that?" He is not meeting Richard's gaze and his eyes dart across what surrounds them - the empty beer garden, an alley filled with litter, the towering row of brick buildings on the other side of the road.

"For _fuck's_ sake, James." Richard breathes the words out as he is reminded that every person holds a different definition of what's obvious. "You know what I'm saying though, yeah? You remember."

"And _I'm_ saying that I don't want to talk about it." James is using his quiet danger-voice, but he follows with an aside, ashamed in tone and quieter still. "Of course I remember."

"I just think we should try-"

"Jeremy not good enough for you?"

Richard looks genuinely shocked. "How did you know?"

James smirks, looking sadistic as he does so; gives a laugh that sounds empty, mirthless. "I _knew_ something was going on between you two. Who'd have thought...?"

"If he told you...it's nothing. It was nothing."

"So were we. And he didn't tell me, Richard. I guessed - well, almost guessed. You shouldn't underestimate the wrong eye-contact, you know. The power of unconscious in-jokes."

Richard finds that he is riled by James's tone of arch detachment. "Jeremy's married."

"You are, too. And just because I'm not doesn’t mean me and Sarah aren’t in a serious relationship-"

"Don't try and take the moral high ground! Besides, you and Sarah, you don’t even live together!"

James focuses on a discarded plastic bag skittering past them on the pavement, blown by the slight breeze, and sighs like he's heard it all before, from everyone. "The world doesn't always work quite as you see it. I'm different to you. Me and Sarah aren't...we're fine."

"James..." begins Richard in protest, because he wants _something_ to happen to reward his strange and misplaced efforts, even if he's deliberately not giving himself enough time to figure out why. But he is too late; a taxi arrives and James climbs in, closing the door quickly.

Richard wants to follow him, but he knows that he must let James go, because James is the one who's doing the right thing.

His footsteps are loud on the tarmac as he walks to his car. He drinks as much water as there is left in a bottle he purchased from a service station earlier in the day, then drives away.

With twenty miles to go 'til home Richard vaguely realises that he's probably just about inebriated enough to get banned if caught like this, but he's come too far to stop now.

The screen of his mobile phone lights up and his noisy ringtone plays, causing Richard to jump slightly. He presses the button to take the call, out of habit.

"Hammond, you tart," Jeremy’s voice slurs over the handsfree. "Where have you buggered off too? I had this idea - you and May as minicab drivers. On the show? Because I thought that-"

"I'm nearly home, Jeremy," Richard croaks out, tired. "I need to get home."

"You still shou- sound drunk. You shouldn't've driven. You stupid fucker." The seriousness of his tone, despite the fact that Jeremy is still tripping over some of the harder consonants in his speech, takes Richard aback. "Did you leave before or after May? God, you'd better be nearly home. You could've just stayed at my flat."

"No." Richard's tone is weary as he thinks of James - James outside, James jumping to conclusions. He finds that he is emphatically shaking his head, punctuation to his speech even though no-one can see it. "No, I couldn't."

"And don't give me that...any of that shit about needing to see your kids. They'll be asleep by now."

"Yeah," Richard replies, feeling wistful and lost and aware of how the steering wheel slips through his hands after a turning and returns to default, neither right nor left.

"Don't crash, Hammond." Then Richard hears a sudden, roaring cheer down the line. "Looks like the footballists have scored. I'd better-"

Signal disappears and the connection breaks; the unfinished sentence hangs in the air.

 _Don’t crash, Hammond_. The words chase each other around Richard’s head during the final few miles of country lanes, and he wonders what Jeremy meant to achieve by saying them.


	2. Chapter 2

A few days later, Richard and James are sitting in Dunsfold's production office when Richard asks "D'you know if the 911's arrived yet?"

"We're still waiting."

As Jeremy starts walking over to them from the other side of the field, mobile phone in one hand and mug of coffee in the other, Richard realises that he has not yet broached the subject he meant to.

"Am I still coming round tonight?" Richard has previously expressed no more than a vague intention to meet this week, but now wishes to increase the likelihood of James's acceptance by sounding as if he is referring to a long-standing social engagement.

"Sure. I mean, if you want."

"Got plenty of booze in?"

"Can have by then." James acknowledges Jeremy with a nod as he reaches them.

"Hammond, May, you're needed. And when's Jordan getting here?"

James chuckles dryly. "No idea."

"You two shirt-lifters not interested in meeting her, then?" Jeremy jibed.

Richard snorts with derision. "I prefer the kind of tits that have _less_ plastic than the interior of a Smart ForFour, thank you."

"Well, granted, it would be better if she had-"

"Hang on," interjects James, with put-on confusion. "Are you suggesting that hers are _fake_?"

Jeremy and Richard laugh, and Jeremy makes a couple more derogatory comments on the matter before a runner arrives to fetch him to sort out a script discrepancy.

"Not trying to assert anything there, were we?" asks James quietly, teasingly, after Jeremy's departure. 'Shirt-lifters'?"

Richard, sniggering slightly from the previous conversation, is still grinning when he answers. "He doesn't bother me. Besides, Jeremy jokes about us being gay about half his waking life, you know that."

"Hm," James says, ambivalent.

* * *

In between filming studio segments, Jeremy watches James watching Richard. Surveillance tactics. No - comprehension, or something close to it.

* * *

Hours later, James answers impatient knocking at his front door.

"I never made it into town for any beer. Sorry." James notes with faint amusement that Richard's movements turn vaguely panicky and his eyes widen at the prospect of having no alcohol, of having nothing to soften the edges. "Does it matter?" he continues, even though the answer's obvious.

James steps aside so that the Richard can cross the threshold and wipe his feet on the doormat. He pulls at his jacket and studies the floor intently. Normally, he doesn't give a second thought to what he's wearing unless a dress code tells him tux, or Jeremy - surely the worst-dressed man ever to have existed? - tells him he looks 'to use your own preferred phrasing, May, a complete and utter cock'. James would prefer to feel suave, but next to Richard wearing undeniably better clothing, he feels old and disappointing, his greying hair falling in front of his eyes.

After a while, they sit on the floor of James's lounge, their backs against the sofa, and talk about nothing in particular. Richard makes earnest gesticulations, and James makes wistful ones. James wishes he was capable of ignoring the shy, flickering looks Richard gives him whenever he believes that James is not paying attention.

Richard makes James feel eighteen again and he hates feeling as if his groundings - the constants he relies on - have been pulled out from under him; hates feeling unbalanced. His mouth goes dry; he can feel a gentle, parched tang on his tongue.

Apparently bored with sitting, Richard reclines across the carpet, one knee bent and the other outstretched, his sock-covered foot playfully toeing the edge of James's sofa cushion. His arms are splayed backwards, and James thinks about what it would be like to pin Richard's wrists hard to the floor and watch him from close up while pressing their frames together. Richard smiles, like he's hearing those thoughts instead of what James is actually saying - something about a documentry he'd seen last week. James blinks and watches and aches.

Richard sits back up. James finally stops talking - much to his own relief - but can't keep his gaze away from Richard's reddened lips.

"Look, James, I think we could-"

"It's not about what you want." He sighs. "You're not someone I can have."

It is clear that Richard doesn't miss the unfortunate phrasing. "That would imply-"

"I...no." James sighs, carding his fingers through his hair.

Richard moves closer - half-crawling along the floor, as if James is some sort of destination, some end - then speaks again, because they'll never get anywhere without words.

"James, say what you were going to say." Richard might well have been shouting the words, but his voice is low, intense. James feels the other man's breath against the angle of his jaw, but unlike Richard's approach and the _Goddamn intoxicating_ way that Richard grins, it seems tentative.

"I want you. I hate how those words sound out loud, but I do, so much Hammond. I don't even know what to do with it."

"This," says Richard, but he doesn't move an inch.

"What?"

Something changes in Richard's eyes, flicks across them. Willpower, determination.

"This," he repeats, but James won't risk anything - even when things are this evident and inevitable - so Richard closes the gap himself. James feels slightly rough lips slide against his own and tries to comprehend how the final move could seem so simple.

The shift feels almost effortless; Richard moves his lips down the side of James's neck and along the line of his shoulder as he starts to remove James's t-shirt.

James wishes they would move faster - if they're going to do this they should get it over with so he can berate himself in the aftermath, but Richard has set the pace and it's ironically languid for something and someone so daring.

Then Richard looks at him, and his eyes say _your turn_.

James slides his hand down the waistband of Richard's jeans. His thumb makes a circle on the skin as his fingers undo the top button of Richard's flies. James wants to finish before he starts thinking again, yet he is not enough of a risk-taker to rush something that could so easily go wrong. They don’t have all the time in the world, but they have enough.

His fingers delicately unfasten Richard's jeans, and his hand draws a meandering, maddening tempo, a touch that he wants Richard to fall into. One nail gently traces the line of Richard's inner thigh as James finally pulls Richard's trousers and boxers down and out of the way.

"Can we do this?" James asks, not quite flippant. When Richard replies 'no', James is sure there's something backwards about the exchange.

He reaches over and pushes Richard back to the floor before sliding down between his legs.

He laves Richard's cock with the tip of his tongue and revels in the resulting shudder. He'd assumed that this would feel wrong and unnatural, but it doesn't - it doesn't even feel daring.

"Should we talk about this?" James's voice is muffled, close to the hot skin of Richard's inner thigh.

"No," Richard says as James slips his lips over the head of Richard’s cock and _hums_.

James places two careful hands on the inside of Richard's open thighs, his fingers digging in slightly as he relaxes his mouth and slides it down Richard's length. The noises that Richard makes are enough encouragement for James to continue. He does not dwell on what he's actually doing, even though the idea that Richard is letting him do this, the idea that he can, the idea that he is setting the pace now, is enough to make his brain to start treading familiar routes James has tried to keep himself away from. There is something unbearably final and lasting about using his mouth to bring Richard to the precipice.

He is sure that it is not particularly _de rigeur_ to think so much when giving head, and so shifts his hands to either side of Richard's hips to keep him from thrusting up, and tries to stop his mind's considerations running like photoreels, over and over.

"Oh, God...James, Ja- James," Richard gasps in between breaths before moaning, "Don't stop."

James decides that his own name has never been spoken to greater effect, or with greater feeling.

He lets Richard slip from his mouth with a soft _pop_ before slyly saying, "I wasn't going to."

Richard whines impatiently, and James takes him back in his mouth, alternately engulfing Richard's length in a tight warmth and sucking at the head of his cock. He licks lines along the underside of the shaft and moans to make Richard moan; a connection through sound.

Richard comes down the back of James's throat, his fingers stuttering across the carpet, nails scarring the fibres. James, still trying to not think, swallows reflexively.

"Sorry," Richard says. "Should've given you warning or something. Just wasn't expecting to, er, get there quite so quickly." His cheeks are flushed.

"I'm not sorry," James replies, meaning it.

"I saw the face you just made, mate. Can't be the greatest taste, I suppose."

"Really, it's fine." James casts a curious and reverent gaze over Richard's thighs, but doesn't look the other man in the eye. "How was that?"

"Well. I came, didn't I."

"But was it OK?"

Richard grins, shakes his head. "You’ll always surprise me, May."

James feels amusement threatening to bubble up to the surface and break from his lips because the whole situation is ridiculous. They kiss; Richard groans when he tastes himself on James's tongue, and James smiles slightly against the shape of Richard's lips.

Richard suddenly twists under James, reversing their positions. Not bothering to remove James's jeans, he presses the whole length of his body against James's. Their legs, both bent at the knees, tangle together as Richard moves, straining against James's denim-clad erection. James revels in being held against the carpet hard enough for it to burn his bare skin; it proves that this is happening.

The friction is amazing, and James's neck arches, the back of his head pressing against the floor as he utters a low, long groan. He looks up at Richard - messy, messed-up, eyes dark with want and hunger for _him_ \- and along with Richard's frantic movements it's enough to have him coming in his jeans. Richard rolls back onto the floor immediately afterwards, and James looks up to see Richard eyeing the dark patch now forming across his crotch.

They catch their breath, watching the ceiling and not each other. They will try and comprehend later. For now, they are content to lie together sated, mis-matched but close enough.

* * *

The routine they slip into is natural and easy; neither thinks it will last for long.

It doesn't last forever, but the duration surprises them both.

* * *

 _Boredom is not a reason for an affair_ , James thinks, trying to convince himself that's the reason for what he - they - are doing in this storage cupboard. It would be a better excuse than the real reason. The real reason is far more irrational - it makes him feel as though his sense and senses are reeling, and that's disconcerting to say the least.

Richard pushes James against the wall, no preamble, his palm flat across James's stomach.

"Ow," James complains.

"Sorry," replies Richard, decreasing the pressure. "One unfortunate side effect of this... _thing_ we have going on here..."

"Yes?" James's voice is low and with an expectant intonation; he raises his eyebrows.

"...is that I'm _pent-up_ all the bloody time-"

"Ah. Er, me too, as it happens."

Richard breathes in, out; leans in. "Now is not the time. Or the place. But-"

James, taking pity on his friend, moves so that their close proximity is now close contact, and starts kissing Richard's neck.

"Fuck...you're not helping!"

"I thought I was."

James sinks to his knees. He is surprised when Richard immediately follows suit.

"That isn't how it works," James says, laughing. The sound stops abruptly as he hears and sees Richard undo his jeans. The denim is dragged halfway down the line of Richard's thighs like soft sandpaper. The sound of Richard's nails digging into the fabric sets James's teeth on edge.

"I want to watch you. Want to watch you touch yourself," Richard suddenly says, softly. His simple request makes James snap like an elastic band stretched beyond its limit, and he begins to undo his own flies.

He feels stupid - kneeling, legs spread, jeans shoved down to knees and cock out, all for Richard's delectation. Bringing himself off is something private, something about and for only him, but he still does it without question because it's what Richard asked for.

He spits into his palm, aware of Richard watching his every move with barely-concealed want. He feels the heat rise in his cheeks. He is vulnerable, but Richard isn't.

It is unusual for Richard to prolong his own point of pleasure, but he seems to be sitting on his hands to stop himself from touching his own cock, and James feels a strange wave of warmth at the realisation that Richard is more-than-half-hard because of _him_.

James's low, secret moans mean that Richard doesn't sit still for long. Instead, he fidgets, not able to keep up with his masochistic abstinence. Aware himself that there are some results worth the wait, James knows Richard cannot stop himself reaching out for his own pleasure and he watches as Richard wraps one hand around his shaft. Neither of them look away from the other, the continued eye-contact a brave and rare acknowledgement of their real tendencies. James sees the line of Richard's neck jut and hears the other man's sounds of desperation.

"God," begins James "you look-" and Richard comes with a single, choked-off cry before James could finish his sentence. James can feel Richard's eyes on him.

And suddenly there is yet another temporary resolution between them as James feels a familiar warmth cover his hand - and _God, no, not on the bloody jeans as well_ \- while Richard avidly watches.

They briefly prolong their meetings to maximise pleasure from the tension; briefly is all they can stand to do. There's no intrigue anymore. The windowless cupboard is far darker than their transparent intentions.

They re-emerge - separately, of course - and meet soon after to rehearse the next exchange to camera; and they find that there's nothing to it, nothing at all.


	3. Chapter 3

"So," Jeremy's voice crackles down the line one dull evening a little less than a week later. "Get up to anything at the weekend?"

Richard smiles, mobile clamped to his ear. "Not much. Mindy made me help with the shopping. I had a go at finding an engine for that old Discovery I bought last weekend..." and Richard catches Jeremy's mumble of 'lost cause, that' ripple through the static. "It's not! It'll be great as soon as I find the right replacement parts." He pauses to allow for the rebuttal, but it seems that Jeremy is not in the mood for comfortable, pointless argument. Richard takes another swig from his bottle of wine. "And I went round to James's."

"Oh? Did he show you his latest set of spanners?"

Richard gives a dark laugh. "If that's a euphemism for something..." He can hear Jeremy's breathing close to his ear, and realises that he's quite tipsy. "No, actually. We-" Richard swallows. "We had dinner." He pauses, but then ploughs forward, his voice lowering as he adds, "And then he went down on me."

After a lengthy pause, Jeremy says, "I though as much."

"Know exactly what we are, do you?" Richard sneers.

"Not exactly, no. But it's easy to glean a pretty good idea of the nature of your relationship." Richard is surprised to hear that Jeremy's voice is warm, and that his next words, uttered in a low, husky tone are, "Tell me."

Richard's eyes widen as he clenches the bottleneck of the wine and twists his hand around and around the murky glass in a nervous action. "I'm not sure if that's a good-"

"Is anyone around right now?"

"No."

"Then tell me." Jeremy has always had this knack for making the most difficult of things sound simple.

Richard's hand still moves nervously around the neck of the bottle. "If you want... _phone sex_ , ring Francie in Germany. If you want-" and Richard realises that he can't make himself say even that two-letter word, because it's too significant an assumption, "then...it's too late. It's me and James."

"I'm imagining you and him this very moment, Hammond," Jeremy says eventually. "Your eyes closed and his open. I'm imagining you lying across his bed-"

"I wasn't on the bed," says Richard, cutting Jeremy off. "It was against the living room wall. He said he couldn’t wait."

Richard can't ignore Jeremy's quiet, guilty moan. He finds that he doesn't really want to.

"He kissed me hard and long. Kept biting down on my lip. Pushed me against the wall by my shoulders with his hot hands." Richard can hear an unmistakable, lengthy rustle of fabric on Jeremy's end of the line, and some sharp and sliding metal - a zip being undone.

"He let his mouth trail all the way down, traced a line with his tongue as he took off my shirt, licked all around my nipples..."

Jeremy moans again, the sound barely perceptible, but there nonetheless.

Richard doesn't want to break, doesn't want to let go and leave the dam to burst. Almost as much as he doesn't want to be hard, and wanting something far beyond the power of his own voice or even his own touch.

"Then he was on his knees. He didn't move for the longest time, just knelt there and looked up at me. God, it was..."

"Then?" Jeremy's voice is unmistakably choked-off, half-finished.

"Then he pulled down my jeans, gripped the insides of my thighs. _Stared_ , for about five seconds – I wanted him so much, I was going to pull him in by the hair in a sec' – and then he finally began sucking me off."

Jeremy might have some idea of what _he_ looked like when up against a wall and hard and gasping, Richard realises, but can't have any notion of James May, on the floor and head bent, hair half-obscuring the way his lips-

"He started by just teasing the head." Richard forces himself to start speaking again. "But soon he was sucking and licking all along the shaft. I could feel his nails digging into my arse. He was looking up at me the whole fucking time, like he _knew_." Jeremy does not say anything to that; it appears that he does not need to ask Richard what he means. "He took almost all of me in at one point. I could barely breathe."

Richard's impatient cock throbs in his jeans. "He made me come for him and my knees nearly gave way. James always gives so much, Jeremy. Maybe too much."

Richard listens, can tell that Jeremy must be close. "He pulled me down by the hips and I kissed him. I could taste myself in his mouth-"

Richard hears a helpless, guilty grunt waver over the connection, then the dial tone. He hangs up and starts picking at the wine label; tiny shreds get stuck under his fingernails.

* * *

The next day, Richard and Jeremy are filming a supercars review and it's like nothing ever happened. It always is.

* * *

 _I need to see you._

Richard receives James's formally typed text on a slow Sunday afternoon.

 _when?_

 _Now._

Richard imagines James typing, fingers shaking. It's odd, but nowhere has James written _please_.

He dons his motorcycle leathers and walks to the door whilst shouting towards up the staircase that he's going to James's house.

Richard spends the journey trying to convince himself that he could have refused, said no. That, these days, James doesn't have the upper hand.

* * *

James is relieved to hear a knock on his door (more subdued than that first time) less than three hours later.

"I wasn't sure you'd actually come round. But, God, I'm glad you did. You look-"

Richard pushes up against James, taking his mouth in a teeth-clashing kiss.

"Don't fuck me around, May," Richard growls.

James rips Richard's jacket off and pushes him backwards until they hit the wall. "Why do you still do this to me?" He groans before kissing Richard possessively. "Get upstairs. If you're going to come when I call, it's - we're - more than fucking against the closest surface we can find. We'll do it in bed, like a proper couple."

Shocked and irrationally turned on by this commanding, snarling May - the frustration and incomprehension of their relationship personified, for the first time truly expressed - Richard, for the second time that night, does not consider saying no. He strides upstairs, determined to at least not be weak in the way he moves.

* * *

James follows Richard up the stairs, unable to wait. Richard has already stripped, eager for whatever James will give him. They kiss again and again, deeper, harder each time, their harsh and uneven breathing the soundtrack.

"It's like that for me, too," Richard pants into James's mouth.

James doesn't have to ask what Richard means, not in this room, solid with the scent of sex and need. He pushes Richard onto the bed. "God, Hammond."

"Don't call me Hammond. Makes me think of-"

"I'll call you what I bloody want." The vibrations of James's voice hit Richard's skin. James notes with relief that his voice is softer, now. "You look-"

Richard touches his forehead to James's and the position is shockingly intimate. "Say it," he whispers. "For once, James, say the words you want to say."

"You look _stunning_."

Richard inhales sharply in response to that single word, laden with meaning in the same way as the way he lies, heavy, across James's mattress. "Yeah?"  
"Yeah." The admission is sincere.

James's long hair brushes lightly against Richard's skin as James moves his focus downwards. He circles Richard's nipples with his tongue, feeling them tauten.

"Stop fucking about May, and just - _fuck_ ," Richard groans as James grins around a hardened bud.

"'Just fuck'? Not quite yet." James speaks in a low and maddening voice as his fingertips make a slow, dragging journey, first down Richard's ribcage - which is rising and falling in breathy anticipation - then through the dark line of hair that begins at Richard's navel and speeds straight downwards.

"Take off some of your own bloody clothes and-"

"Wouldn't want to jump the gun, would we, Hammond?"

James turns Richard over, one arm pressing him into the mattress, while the other opens the bedside drawer and takes out what they will need. It's not a drawer that anyone else is in the habit of rifling through, but James still hides the condoms and lubricant under a strange mix of complimentary shampoo bottles taken from hotels and small parts of motorcycle engine like they're something shameful.

James undresses: taking off his shoes, socks, trousers and underwear in an orderly fashion, before unbuttoning his shirt and hanging it neatly over the bedroom's only chair. He smiles as he watches Richard bury his resting head slightly further into the mattress, this time at James's pedantry at a time like this, deliberately and excruciatingly languid.

And then James opens the packet he's holding with his teeth, feeling like he can - will - devour him.

There is a snap of plastic and then, with a single cool, slick finger stroking the rim of Richard's hole, James finally intrudes; slow, spiralling.

"Hurry up!" exclaims Richard once James slides in a second finger. "I, just...I need you inside me. I can take it."

"Can you?" says James, with an understated tone of disbelief. His ability to sound as if he's detached isn't an aptitude Richard shares.

"I need you inside me." Richard repeats.

"You'll have to wait."

"I...I wait enough. Have to watch you every day, just _standing_ there like this never happens; every _day_ -"

Richard gasps as James's hot tongue glides down his back, taking the same path of his spine. Between and past the gap between his cheeks, just...missing...

"I love it when you’re like this, Hammond," James drawls. " _So_ needy." He has one hand splayed across Richard's arse, his mouth laving and sucking at the inside of Richard's right thigh, ensuring that Richard's in no state to object to the use of surname this time around.

"Just-"

James, for once, takes the plunge and enters Richard in one movement, his short nails scratching at Richard's shoulder and his mouth against Richard's lower back.

James knows that he will never tire of the noise that Richard makes when his own cock first enters him, a choked _ungh_ in the back of his throat.

He begins to move, thrusting, running his tongue along the lingering sweat set across Richard's skin and revelling in being able to taste the musk. His thumbs draw lazy shapes across Richard's arse so that there is a juxtaposition of touch, hard and soft. The hairs on their legs grate together.

"Come. Come, Richard, come," whispers James into Richard's ear, in a strange kind of litany, like he's coaxing Richard there, like he's right. And Richard does, noisily. James's orgasm, soon after, is more subdued, because even when he finally loses control he is still holding something back.

They sleep in the same bed, like a proper couple.

* * *

Their relationship is not proper. It is incomplete. It is less about lust now, more about frustration.

 _Top Gear_ is on a filming break, and so they see little of each other, have to work to find the excuses. Right now, the sex is when they talk the most.

* * *

Richard is at James's flat, has been for the whole day. The conversation has been bordering on stale, and Richard wishes to leave and return to the kind of love he sees in his wife and children - the unconditional sort, the kind that makes him feel guilty as hell. The consummation of his affair is no longer routine and it's made him realise how unsuitable they really are. As _Top Gear_ 's ratings steadily increase and Richard finds that he is recognised in the street steadily more often, he is more conscious of what he is actually doing and committing to and potentially throwing away.

Richard puts his bottle of beer down on the countertop and, quick as a flash, pins James against the nearest cabinet. James isn't quite looking him in the eyes; he's using the trick of fixating his gaze on the spot of skin between them instead, above the bridge of Richard's nose.

Richard thrusts his hand down James's jeans and covers James's cock.

"I'd rather," mumbles James, and Richard thinks he is about to admit something very painful, frown lines crinkling across his forehead and gaze cast left, voice as harsh and bleak as the fluorescent kitchen light. "I'd rather do something else. Didn't you say you’d brought a film, or something?"

"Yeah," says Richard, "sure." He removes his hand, matter-of-fact, and he can only feel half-motivated to mourn for what he could feel under his fingers. "It's a DVD. I'll go and get it."

"Richard," James calls out as the other man leaves the room.

"Yeah?"

"I haven't got a DVD player."

Richard smiles fondly, gentle lines creasing around his eyes. "Your computer'll play it." He retrieves the disc from a department store carrier bag, holds it aloft. "Care to be introduced to the twenty-first century?"

* * *

 _Maybe it is time_ , James thinks when in bed alone that night, _to give up. To end._ Inevitability goes both ways, after all - falling in and falling out of, stepping towards and walking away.


	4. Chapter 4

The day is bland, the location even more so; in preparation for series six somebody had decided that a two day brainstorm at a typically-nondescript Hotel Ibis would be a good idea. James, Jeremy and Richard are sitting in the hotel bar, and Jeremy has had a couple of glasses of wine. This is not a euphemistic approximation but an exact measurement - he's drunk two glasses of the house red, and so doesn't particularly feel under the influence.

James and Richard, however, are drunk; not in a not-responsible-for-your-actions, unable-to-walk-upright, terrible-morning-hangover-inducing way, but enough to loosen inhibitions and tongues.

"Why do we not do more production meeting conference-things?" questions Jeremy at a typically loud volume.

"Because we have to stay overnight in crappy hotels smack bang in the middle of the M25." says James.

"Shut up, Slow," replies Jeremy good-naturedly. "We're _miles_ from the M25." The arbitrary distance is emphasised by an exaggerated gesticulation.

"Miles from anything interesting at all, you mean," grumbles Richard, looking gloomily around their surroundings; everyone in the room is somehow connected to _Top Gear_.

James leans into Richard conspiratorially, whispering something that Jeremy doesn't quite catch, and - Jeremy can barely believe it - _winks_. They're at the tail-end of an argument about Mazdas and traction control, and so Jeremy suggests that they all head up to bed.

"I'll pay the tab," he offers, feeling devious as the lightly-inebriated James and Richard wander towards the lift. They've forgotten that the drinks will be added to their hotel bill instead of there being a tab to pick up at all.

Jeremy waits at the bar for two and a half minutes and then takes the lift up three floors to return to his room, deep in thought all the way there.

The door to Richard's room, which is next to Jeremy's, is not quite closed, and Jeremy can more than hear them in there. He pushes it open further. He had hoped they would've had the sense to go to James's room, which is much further down the corridor and out of harm's way, but since when were James-and-Richard all about sense? Since when was any of this all about sense?

Jeremy has worked out what his co-presenters are doing by now, having a clear view thanks to mirrors and the room's sparse furnishings. Irritatingly, the sight is having more of an affect on him than he'd convinced himself it would.

Richard is lying across the double bed, naked, all tanned skin and mussed hair, how Jeremy has never actually seen him. His legs splay off the bed's side, one foot just touching the floor, the other hanging useless in the air, the knee bent, and as he arches his back off the mattress and gasps quietly, Jeremy's eyes are drawn to Richard's groin, and the pair of hands forcing his hips down.

James - his erection visibly tenting his underwear - continues the onslaught his mouth is carrying out on Richard. Jeremy is mesmerised by James's mouth engulfing Richard's cock over and over, his head bobbing up and down the shaft. The only sounds in Jeremy's ears are pornographic sucking noises and Richard's moans. To his intense embarrassment, Jeremy finds himself shockingly hard as he struggles to control his breathing. Neither of his unsuspecting friends let up on their unintended show.

Jeremy's not just observing, a word with connotations of the passive, of eyes just happening to be in front of a series of moving objects. He's _seeing_ , watching, realising what he's missing now and what he half-had, once. He has always been fascinated by his two friends' relationship. He doesn’t want to psychoanalyse too much but knows that he wants to realise how they work; has wanted to know since that brief, searing, dirty phone call with Richard that had confirmed it all. It had been James sucking Richard's cock then, too. Did they do anything else? Did they fuck? Did Richard ever suck James off? What did that look like? How many people had seen James like he was now? Couldn't be that many. Jeremy suddenly bites down painfully on his own tongue as an image flashes before his eyes of Richard allowing James to come on his face, semen splashing wet across Richard's mouth and cheeks and the darkness of his eyelashes. God, that was... _amazing_.

Jeremy presses his palm against his cock - confined and hard in to his trousers - and comes close to letting a loud and filthy moan escape his lips.

Richard's flushed neck twists as he grunts out his orgasm. He looks lost, Jeremy thinks. Not lost in the moment, just lost - like he's trying to work out where he is and where he wants to go. Jeremy suddenly realises that James and Richard – James and Richard fucking, that is – are not going to last. They lack the right fire. _His_ fire.

Jeremy comes; sounds of the room return fairly quickly to his ears as he presses his dry and wanting lips together.

He wonders if the guilt he is feeling - about watching, about seeing something that he isn't meant to, about wanting to be where he is standing rather than wanting to leave - is anything like the feeling Richard and James must, surely, experience whenever they think about their respective and respected partners, family in one case, and finally decides that it can't be. Their kind of guilt must be a whole different kettle of fish to his, even if guilt is still guilt. Same word, no thesaurus required.

* * *

"How was that?" James asks quietly.

Richard remembers those words being said before, remembers what it was like the first time. The two men on the bed catch each other's eye for a moment. He doesn't say anything.

"I thought so," continues James. The next silence seems to stretch.

Richard is tugging at his hair. "I can't do this anymore. S'not worth a career and Mindy and Willow and Izzy. It's not. I can't risk it anymore, James." He doesn’t mention why he could before.

He is ready to face an argument - a telling-off for talking about the picture-postcard side of his life post-coitus - or at least confusion, but the only words James replies with are, "I know."

"We had a good run," says Richard. "We've lasted for months. Series'."

It doesn't feel like a break up, because the word _break_ is one-syllable-short forceful and this is no more forceful than a leaf gently letting go of a tree in autumn, ready for winter to set in. Natural progression. They've lasted for seasons.

* * *

Jeremy is still there. Jeremy hasn't moved, terrified that the floor he stands on might creak and reveal him. This feels more voyeuristic than he can stand, and there's not even a build-up to orgasm to distract him this time around. This isn't sex. It's James and Richard wondering what's changed and it hurts to watch.

It makes Jeremy feel lonely enough to take a chance on the old floorboards and creep back to his own room. In the end, his presence is never noticed, and that's probably just as well.

* * *

"Fag?" James asks Jeremy, although he hands one over without waiting for a reply.

"Thank God _you're_ not trying to quit like him over there," Jeremy says. Richard is standing so that he is hovering at the fire escape nearest to _Top Gear_ 's London office, the door open so as to be within shouting distance of James and Jeremy. He is chewing a strip of nicotine gum, looking grumpy.

"Shut the door, Hamster," orders Jeremy over his shoulder, and Richard scowls deeply at the use of the epithet. "You'll let in all the dirty smokers' air. Wouldn't want that, would we?"

Richard shuts the door, as per requested, and presumably returns to his desk. James, against the iron railings of the balcony, feels a little like he's trapped. Jeremy looks away from James, blinking into the summer brightness.

"So, you've shagged Hammond," he pronounces, and even as James's disbelieving warning-cough slices through the air, he continues with, "What was that like?"

James is irritated that Jeremy has chosen to bring this up on a perfectly normal office day. "Going to tell me about _your_ exploits, are you?"

Jeremy lights his cigarette, then James's. Maybe sharing lighters isn't significant at all. Maybe it doesn't feel strangely intimate. Maybe.

Now, of course, by social convention and expectation, James is expected to stay outside with Jeremy for the duration of their smoke.

"Course not," Jeremy replies, still looking out over London. "Just wanted to see if you would."

"Look, I can't even work out myself how it ever happened that we were, but we're, er, not, anymore. So that's that."

"Why?"

"I stole his tooth whitener."

Jeremy doesn't laugh. But then again, the joke wasn't that funny. "No, really. Why?" he pushes.

"Are you Jeremy Clarkson or Jeremy Paxman?"

"Get a backbone, man. I've only asked you twice."

James swallows visibly. "Imagine if we'd got caught?"

"Who could catch you?" Jeremy asks, a shimmer of humour flashing behind the glassy pupils of his eyes.

"Press?" James shrugs. "Sarah?"

"You should have thought of Sarah first," points out Jeremy, as if their conversation is a test. Then, suddenly, he changes to a less charged subject. "You going to the pub tonight?"

"Is Richard going to the pub tonight?" He tries to come across as casual, but just comes across as nervous.

Jeremy, of course, isn't fooled. "Why wouldn't he be?" The teasing words are somewhat undermined when they are followed by a drawn-out smoker's cough.

"In excellent shape for doing voiceover then?"

Jeremy scowls, stubs out his cigarette and goes back inside. He leaves James with thoughts that he has managed up until now to not entertain when awake and sober. He wonders how much of this urge is about curiosity and how much of it is about control. And if there's room for anything else.

* * *

"Come an' sleep at mine," says James, slurring his words as he and Jeremy leave the bar and step out onto the pavement. "God knows you can't drive anywhere."

It's dangerous; perhaps not as dangerous as Jeremy climbing into his GT right now and driving all the way back to Chipping Norton, but dangerous nonetheless. James will spend more time with his arm slung around Jeremy's neck than he ever will sober, and Jeremy doesn't want to do anything that might increase probability of rash impetuousness. But it makes sense. James's home is closer than his and Jeremy can barely give other options consideration when James's alcohol-breath is so close.

* * *

Hours later, James is bleary-eyed but not asleep. It's hot - he can feel the sweat on the back of his neck and he's stretched out on the bed naked, the covers pushed to the side. The vertical blind that hangs at the window is open so that the slats are sideways, and the thin curtains are closed. Light lies languidly across James in clear-cut stripes, a streetlamp outside the source.

He hears a soft knock on his bedroom door, then the noise of it being opened a fraction. "James?"

"Go to sleep, Clarkson," James mutters irritably, just loud enough for Jeremy to hear.

Jeremy walks in, but stops suddenly just beyond the threshold - one hand still on the doorhandle - and doesn't move any closer. James's skin prickles.

"I'll speak to you in the morning," James says. He can feel Jeremy's eyes raking across him, but he remains barely-moving; doesn't shy away.

Only when he turns his head to look at Jeremy properly does Jeremy's gaze dart away. And then he leaves, shutting the door with a quiet click. The air is so stifling, so heavy, so _fucking_ resigned.

* * *

Morning, and awkwardness hangs in the air, a prelude.

They meet on the landing at the same time. Domestic, in a sense, like a marriage gone wrong. They'd been in separate beds.

Jeremy is dressed in the clothes he wore the night before; James has only pulled on a pair of pyjama bottoms. Jeremy stares down at the ground, watching the anxious flexing of James's bare feet as they stand close together in the small space.

They are both sober now, aware, although sluggish, with vaguely aching heads. Jeremy wishes that he did not feel so awkward about the skin on show last night and now. They are both human, after all. Both men...

"Sorry 'bout before," mumbles Jeremy before he can carry on thinking, and he is unsure as to why he is bringing up the whole brief encounter when he could have just allowed their friendship to continue instead, all the expected and appreciated mocking intact. Couldn't he ever just leave things be?

"You know I don't...I mean, I'm not even-" James mumbles.

"Of course. I don't, either. We're talking entirely accidental naked encounters here."

James sniggers.

"I really better get home," Jeremy continues. "Things to do."

"Yep."

They shuffle awkwardly, both trying to pass each other on the same side of the room.

"Look," begins James, "why were you even coming into my room in the first place? You weren't actually going to try anything, were you?"

"Course not! I-" Jeremy doesn't mention how much he's already thought about what he's seen - his eyes had apparently followed a path of their own accord and now his brain is paying way too much attention.

James smiles. "I can hear your thoughts from here." He steps in closer, and for one strange and terrifying moment there is nothing that Jeremy wants to know more than who started things between James and Richard.

James breathes in deeply, and Jeremy finds himself doing the same - James smells of tobacco, sweat and something akin to wood smoke. They stand close enough together for their legs to be slightly entwined in each others'. Jeremy reaches up, lets his fingers fall through James's flyaway morning-hair. His fingers reach around the nape of James's neck, their most intimate gesture yet.

Without speaking and with an uncharacteristically arrogant expression across his features, James starts undoing the fastenings on Jeremy's jeans. Jeremy realises with a slight frisson of shock that gets mixed up in the pleasure of it all that he was absolutely expecting this to happen one day, he just hadn't expected it to happen like this.

The slicing noise that his belt makes when it is being undone is the noise that Jeremy will forever associate with his resolve crumbling.

James pulls down his roomy, creased pair of pyjama bottoms himself, then reaches out with one hand and wraps it around both their cocks, firm and sure and real. Jeremy wishes he wouldn't refuse so resolutely to look at anywhere except Jeremy's jugular vein, but you can't have it all and they can work on that kind of shy passiveness. He is content to watch without being watched himself, for now.

Their foreheads touch and then they finally kiss and that makes things seem a little less detached.

James says something, and Jeremy doesn't hear; he asks for it to be repeated.

"I said, 'You haven't used my toothbrush, have you?'".

James's hand is still moving and Jeremy looks at James with an incredulous expression across his face.

"No. Ja-." Jeremy breaks off and breathes quick and pleasure-filled as the other man employs a vigorous twist of his wrist. "James. I got a new one out of the packet. Happy?"

"No," says James, and for the first time that morning he looks up properly and grins.

Perhaps this is exactly what it should be like. After all, there shouldn't have even been any expectations to fulfil.

Jeremy wishes they weren't wearing so many clothes, but now isn't exactly the time to break away, and he doesn't want James to run. He must be content to remember last night's glimpse until the next time. He meets James's lust-darkened gaze.

And then his vision becomes as blurred as the movement of James's hand, clenched around both their cocks and quickening, and he knows it won't be long now.

"Jez," James mutters into the shell of Jeremy's ear as he comes suddenly, sending Jeremy over the same edge and his head falling back against the wall. It's all slightly unsatisfying.

"I thought you said that you weren't, er-" says Jeremy eventually.

James shrugs. "Just seeing what we - it, I mean - feels like."

"We're doing this again, then."

"Of course...you always _were_ the one to advocate sensible decisions."

"It _is_ a sensible idea. It's an excellent arrangement. I see no problem with it."

"You never did. You never do. Want breakfast?"

"No." Now Jeremy is the one shying away. "I'd better get back."

"Why do you want to do this again?"

Jeremy looks up from his careful re-fastening of his jeans for a moment. "Same reason as you do."

There is not a word for it, there is not a definition. But there is meaning. It doesn't bother them that much that they are unable to put their finger on the point.


	5. Chapter 5

Richard is visiting James. They have been chatting, bantering - the very picture of platonic.

James doesn't expect Richard to try his luck again; thought he'd have the sense to leave that inclination well alone.

And yet Richard - always challenging, being a challenger - is asking, ruffling his hair and biting his lip and _oh God, he's practically pouting_.

James says yes.

* * *

"Right, I really have to go now," Richard tells James sometime later, reaching for his discarded jeans. "You know, Izzy said to me the other day that she wishes I'd read to her more often, and I was thinking about what I could do to be at home more and-"

"Not stick 'round here," James says icily. Richard's got the face he hates, the 'you haven't got kids, you wouldn't understand' face.

"I wasn't suggesting..." He pauses, but James is not looking at him, can't see his face.

"Richard, don't talk about your wife and your kids and your dogs and your perfect family life when you're fucking _naked in my bedroom_."

"I mention them quite a bit, but they're my _life_ , you know that. And you know them. Don't you see this - us - as separate?" Once he's said that, Richard shuts his mouth and looks as though he wants to never open it again.

"What's brought this sudden bout of guilt on, then?"

"A photographer came round the other day." Richard stares at the wall as James starts to put on his socks without any particular reason to do so "for, er, for this thing I'm doing for the _Mirror_. Took some nice pictures of me and the kids."

It's career and family together, synonymous. It's a slap in the face, yet it's irrational to feel offended. They both have the right to walk away.

He watches Richard leave and berates himself, can barely believe that he thinks things might work this time; that he's sleeping with Richard _and_ Jeremy now.

* * *

"Have you seen that press release for the new Citroën yet?" Jeremy asks.

James nods sleepily.

"God-awful, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know. Good little car. Even if it _is_ French."

"Hammond agrees with me."

"Hammond worships you, the little arse-licker." James means that as a joke, of course, but only laughs - hand over mouth, lines around his eyes creased - when he sees the expression that crosses over Jeremy's face.

"When did you two do _that_?" James asks eventually, voice drenched in forced levity. "Didn't think he had it in him..."

"Last week, actually," says Jeremy bluntly, one hand searching for a cigarette within the debris that covers his borrowed bedside table.

"Oh. So you're...at the moment-"

"Bloody hell, mate, I thought you knew."

"Have you ever done...that to him?"

"No. He's never asked me to, actually." Jeremy waits for the next question.

"Right," says James. "Right." He leaves at that.

* * *

James and Richard are standing in a darkened alcove on their break. They're away from equipment and crew, but anyone could walk past and clearly see what they are doing.

"Richard...Richard, we've got ten minutes left and I haven't even had a cup of tea." Richard continues kissing the corner of his friend's mouth, drawing the edges of his fingers down James's neck. James can feel Richard's short fingernails scrape slightly against his throat. He can feel that Richard is hard and grasping anything he can because of it; curiously, he'd been hard even before he'd touched James. "Jeremy'll probably stomp past here any minute now." There is a tinge of desperation in James's voice.

"Jeremy," Richard begins, voice hot and breathy in James's ear as he presses into James, holding him against the wall. James is mortified to find that the name - said like that and by Richard and within a context of multiple perspectives - is almost enough. "Do you want to know what I've just done to Jeremy?" James inhales shortly and sharply as Richard moves his hand underneath James's jumper, his touch meandering down to the waistband of James's trousers in maddening, teasing circles.

James hates that he nearly doesn't give into Richard's stupid game, but lets the single, damned word tumble out anyway as Richard shifts his other hand to undo James's belt buckle, and means it too. " _Yes_."

"You know that big desk in the office?" There is a definite inflection of danger in the situation now. Richard's voice is low, but there's the possibility of somebody walking by them at any moment. "I pushed him up against it like I'm pushing you up against this wall right now." Richard successfully unclasps James's belt buckle and starts to open the zip of James's trousers. "I kissed him, hard - he likes it hard," and Richard gives a single thrust against James's thigh. "And I opened my mouth with his tongue..."

Richard leaves the sentence hanging, words not needed to tell the rest of its story as he pushes aside James's boxers, curls his small hand around James's cock and starts to jerk the him off. James shudders; he can smell their musk.

"When he was aching for it, I pulled down his jeans and turned him over, held him by his shaking arms. Jeremy kept panting, James, said he wanted to come, that he couldn't wait. But I had to stop, just for a moment. He looked...his head was on the desk, jeans and underwear bunched around his knees, arse up in the air just for me. He was rutting against the desk, so desperate to come. I got some lube from my bag and coated my fingers in it, and I slid them into his arse. No preamble. I was going to fuck him, but it seems my fingers were enough. I'm still hard from Jeremy. _I_ never had release."

James's face is flushed; he's close to coming from Richard's words. He can feel Richard's hand, slick from the lube he'd used before with Jeremy, and, now, James's precome.

"Suck my fingers, James," and Richard lets three digits brush against James's lips, waiting for the other man to lave at their tips. Richard quickens the movement of his other hand. "Fifteen minutes ago, they were inside Jeremy." Richard's eyes widen, glimmer, blink once.

James thinks of Jeremy bent over the desk in front of Richard, Richard still clothed, Jeremy vulnerable. He thinks of the noises that must have filled the room, the helpless moans. He thinks of the smell of sex seeping into cheap wood and fibreglass, and he comes at the images Richard's words provide, biting down on Richard's skin to control the sound he makes.

As his vision becomes less blurred, James is aware of Richard speedily fisting his own cock with a look of striking, restless fury on his face, his own release mingling with James's in a matter of seconds.

* * *

"Are you going back tonight?" James asks Jeremy as they drink tea in James's kitchen, lit only by the setting sun. It is later that same day, much later, and James can't tear his eyes away from the way Jeremy's fingers curl around the handle of his mug.

"No."

"Do you feel like...?"

Jeremy smirks. "Yeah. Later. After we've had dinner. I'll order from _Light of Nepal_ or something."

James looks across at his friend like he had only just noticed he is there. "God, what the hell are we doing? It doesn't even feel real, this." The sun has almost gone by now, blood orange light shining in shafts across the left side of Jeremy's face. Jeremy looks slightly shocked at the openness of James's questioning expression.

Jeremy stares straight into James's eyes, the reality and neediness of the gaze as uncomfortable and ache-inducing as sleeping on the floor.

"This is real. Believe me James, this is real."

And then Jeremy crosses the room and leans in and kisses him, not with the arrogance of someone who can but with the passion of someone who wants to, who means it. He smells faintly of paint, and the tea he has been drinking. James expects the kiss to deepen, but Jeremy is soon pulling away.

"So," begins Jeremy, continuing as if the conversation hadn't had an interlude, "I'm meeting Andy down at his local tomorrow and he thinks-"

"Jez, does Richard still...?"

Jeremy buries his head in his hands like a man exhausted. It means he's no longer looking at James. "You know we do. He knows you know we do."

"No, that's now what I meant. Does Richard still think you don't know about him and me?"

"Yes."

"Does Richard still not know about us?" James's voice cracks on 'us'.

"I think so."

"He might find out soon. He's not stupid. I mean, how long is this going to go on for?" Even James is unsure about which _this_ he is referring to. Any of the things they have no words for.

"What," Jeremy says, raising a finger as he makes his point, like they're in the studio, "if there's a way for all three of us to be happy here? Having one or the other, it's a false dichotomy. What if we were just _us_? All of us, together."

James realises how dark the room had become now the sun has set, and turns to switch on the light.

His next thought is that he's always assumed _happiness_ is too trivial to be given more than a bare consideration when it comes to all this. Things, as he has already established, just happen.

"It wouldn't work," he says, understanding in full what Jeremy is suggesting. "Threesomes are...Jeremy, they're for fantasies, pornography. A one-off. Not three middle-aged men in the public eye. How many people have ruined their lives just because they stopped thinking for _one night_ and let someone lead them away by the cock?"

"James." The timbre of Jeremy's voice slows his racing thoughts down. "Do you really not think this is worth it?"

"I don't know," James groans, his head in his hands. "Why are we even talking about this?" He sighs. "Look, Richard's got both of us as well, and you might think that means we're only one step away from all falling into bed together, but-"

"He _thinks_ he's got both of us. He's got neither of us. Not really. Not yet."

James is less sure of that than Jeremy is, remembers what has happened at other times, in other places. Searching for something to occupy his worried hands, he turns on the kettle once more.

He's known Richard the longest, just. Can't bear to think of never being allowed a taste of that taut, tanned torso again.

* * *

They fall asleep long after a curry and events afterwards, but Jeremy finds himself awake again in the small hours. He assumes it's from force of habit - his common, unjustifiable restlessness - before he fully registers the volume of James's snoring and shakes him awake in a burst of intolerance brought on by tired frustration.

"Don't sleep on your back, man. May. _May_. Wake up, you bastard."

"Just so you can drop off?" comes the dazed reply. "Why would I want to do that?"

Even in the darkness, Jeremy's eye roll during the pause in conversation is visible. "Might as well stay awake now, I suppose."

"Mm. Catch the sunrise."

"Not _exactly_ what I was thinking. God, I hate it when you're poetic."

James smiles. "How do you like me, then?"

Jeremy laughs, slides so that he is on his side, closer to James. "Over. Under. Doesn't matter, really."

"I don't think," says James, sliding his large hands over Jeremy's hipbones to support his move to straddle, letting his touch sink touch into the other man's skin, "you've ever said anything nicer to me."

"Don't get used to it," replies Jeremy, quietly enjoying the way they fitted closely, two bodies together and face to face. His expectant expression parallelling James's somehow _shameless_ one.

And then the world dissolves; Jeremy feels James's fingers suddenly penetrate him crossed, separating minutely once sheathed. James smiles slightly, and Jeremy's legs open entirely of their own volition. Then James is holding Jeremy's bent legs up and apart with a rare sort of ferocity, his touch sparking with friction at each flexing of Jeremy's thighs. Each powerful thrust has the headboard banging against the wall. James's hair hangs down, jutting on every thrust against his jawbone. He's absolutely _there_ , in the moment, surrounded and enamoured.

Jeremy never thought he'd get to see him like this, so raw and free. He feels as if there should be music playing, something with a seedy, heavy, regular beat, as they slide against and into one another.

He has the impression that he'll never see James like this again, the intensity something fleeting and false like a trick of the light.

* * *

James and Jeremy are splayed across James's bed, the sheets crumpled.

James flicks a speculative eye up and down the gap between himself and a still-snoring Jeremy and tries to imagine a wide-eyed Richard between them. James would...someone would get left out, surely? That is how it has always been, after all, if not in spirit at least in practice.

James always hates this - the morning after sex, the drowsy light of day, the time for consequences. He notices that Jeremy has failed to replace the cap of the bottle of lubricant again. James leans over to correct the mistake.

"Srrrsrh," says Jeremy, as he rolls his body towards James, still half-asleep. "Richard."

"James."

"Oh fuck, sorry. For fuck's sake."

"It's all the same, I suppose," replies James with a hint of wry, a hint of hurt.

"I don't see you as like him," says Jeremy, "it's not the same as this with him. It's different."

"Is it? Really?" James could never even choose. But he realises that Jeremy sees things differently. He wants both together.

"Yes."

"Is it better? Is he better? He must be better," says James, looking downcast and thinking of the way the Richard smiled and the noise that he makes when James sucks on his bottom lip. He's never seen Jeremy and Richard together, of course, but _God_ that would be amazing. Together, close, consummating their constant sniping foreplay-flirtation. He couldn't begin to count the number of times he's seen them together and wondered why they ever wanted him. It follows, even if that's not justification for it, that he wants to see how their bodies fit in bed together too.

Jeremy looks as if he does not know where to put his hands as he considers the question. "His heart's not in at the moment. But sometimes, he's- it's not better, James. Sometimes we're the closest, sometimes it's me and him and sometimes it's you and him. We can't seem to settle. So sometimes it's better with him, and sometimes it's better with you."

"We are the same, then."

"No, you're different. _It_ , though," and Jeremy gesticulates, draws some shapeless feeling in the air with his finger. "It is the same ultimately, yes. Still won't," he smirks, "compare notes?"

"Nope," replies James, almost cheerfully, staring resolutely out of his curtained bedroom window and considering Jeremy's apparent fascination with his and Richard's relationship. Outside, it is drizzling.

"But right now, would you prefer me or-"

"Richard," sighs James, "wants too many things at once for me to see us working for long.

"Oh, so he's just a force of habit?"

James laughs, and Jeremy smiles slightly. "No! No, he's, he's...just him."

Jeremy leans over and - it's not even a kiss, it's too innocent for that - he nips at James's bottom lip and murmurs something into James's skin about the sour taste of curry in the morning. James kisses back because he wants to, and to shut Jeremy up. Get him to stop talking and stop thinking.

Jeremy slides down James's body and starts to suck James's half-hard cock, as if on a whim. His hand reaches out and grabs the tube of lubricant and a condom. James hears the plastic pop.

"Why did you close the lid before?" mutters Jeremy, amused. "Idiot."

James grins as he stares at the ceiling, even as his breaths become shorter when he feels Jeremy's slick fingertips push against the raised backs of his thighs, widening and raising his legs so much that the duvet cover they are underneath slides off the bed. "Have you met me?"

"It seems that now," replies Jeremy as he crooks one finger inside James so that he hits _that_ spot, "would be an excellent time for us to be formally introduced."

The next sound that James makes is not easy to decipher, but it's close to pleading.

James feels everything shift, and as Jeremy stretches and strains inside and over him, the intensity making James's eyes flutter tightly shut, they are closer to each other than they ever expected they could be.

Jeremy makes James's body shake on every other thrust, he dips his head to suck and gently bite at one of James's nipples, the flesh tautening as James moans.

Sweat slides across their skin, and James can't think why he wants anything else but this.

James feels Jeremy's keen hand start to bring him off with a kind of energy that seems predatory, claiming, and as he feels the edge draw near, James wonders for a brief moment what Jeremy really desires from all this.

James comes - unusually noisily - into Jeremy's clenched hand; Jeremy follows him seconds later.


	6. Chapter 6

It feels normal, routine, and James can sometimes barely separate the bickering friendship and the bittersweet climax. He finds that he has managed to convince himself that what he and Jeremy do and are is nothing out of the ordinary. More than once.

* * *

It's been a long day's filming, so Jeremy lets James into his hotel room as soon as he knocks.

"This whole place is so _chintzy_ , it's hideous," James begins, motioning towards the flocked wallpaper. His remark edges Jeremy's disorganised thoughts with a faint irritation, and Jeremy can't help feeling James has missed the point. They're talking; worse, they're talking about nothing, like they can't converse properly anymore.

"What do you know? And you don't give two shits about that type of thing, anyway-"

"Oh," James replies, shutting the heavy door behind him. "Oh. I wasn't aware I was in the presence of some interior design prodigy-"

" _You're_ certainly not one. I've seen your house."

"D'you know what Richard's filming next week?" says James, gabbling. " He's road testing a pink Nissan Micra C+C! I told him he should-"

"Shut up about Richard," says Jeremy, the presence of brash jealousy in his eyes unmistakable. "Did you ever do _this_ with Richard?" Jeremy mutters into James's ear, intimate, as he tightly grasps both of James's wrists and presses his body against James's back. "Don't move." James doesn't move. "Did he ever fuck you hard enough you couldn't sit down for a week afterwards?"

"I don't think he ever...to me, actually," says James quietly.

"It was almost always you giving to him, wasn't it?" continues Jeremy, voice low, dangerous and sensuous; James's eyes fall closed for a long moment like he's overwhelmed. "You've got to learn to give only as much as you get, I think. But first, James, you've got to let yourself go."

James turns to face Jeremy; Jeremy grips him by the shoulder to stop him moving further. "Unbutton your shirt. Slowly." Jeremy hopes that he's giving the impression that he's thought this through as his outstretched thumb brushes over James's wrist, a tiny, reassuring, intimate gesture, before his hands pull away altogether, letting James move again.

James snorts, drawls his words. "Slowly. Of course."

Jeremy's eyes trail over James's long fingers flicking the fastenings open, one by one. He lets his palm glide smoothly over James’s torso, pinches James’s nipple. He notes James biting his lip and is faintly annoyed that James is still holding something back.

"You'll do what I say?" Jeremy asks, both his hands carding through James's hair for a moment.

"Yes."

James stands there, impossibly wide-eyed, and there's something so fucking sexy about that, the idea that he'll just stand here and do what Jeremy tells him to.

"Strip."

James smiles a little as he kicks off his shoes and pulls off his socks, jeans and boxers.

"Kneel on the floor," commands Jeremy. "Then lean forward. Support yourself with your lower arms."

James looks very submissive stretched long like that, his arse bare. "Good."

Jeremy then sits behind James and begins to trace his touch up James's legs, teasing. There's a slight friction to the maddeningly meandering figure-of-eights he makes with his fingers.

"James," Jeremy begins. "I don't want you to think. I'm going to make you come apart."

"I can't," James gasps. "I can't-"

"Oh, James," says Jeremy, all mock-seriousness, lowering his head to suck and bite at the soft skin of James's inner thigh. "You and your self-control."

James's legs open a little wider and he hums, deep and muffled.

James gives a low _whine_ as Jeremy licks long stripes along his back, spine arching as Jeremy's tongue slips between James' cheeks. Arousal buzzes and sparks along Jeremy's cock and up his spine from the feel of it.

James's body stutters, and he lets his forehead rest on the floor. Jeremy works his tongue deeper licking at James's entrance before pushing inside.

"Please," James moans as he bucks into Jeremy's touch.

Jeremy reaches with one hand to grip James's previously ignored erection, stroking languidly in sharp contrast to the quickening flicks of his tongue.

James falls apart when he comes, clearly and satisfyingly undone.

Jeremy wraps the hand covered in James's come around his own cock and strokes himself a few times. He slides a couple of fingers into James's arse then enters him without any further preparation.

Jeremy finds release in only a few deep thrusts.

"Thinking about Richard now?" he asks with quiet menace, letting his fingers run through the come that covers James's thighs. "Mine," he says, his now-softening cock still inside the man he holds close.

 _Mine for now_ , he thinks, knows, admits, when the lights are out and there's nothing else to think about; when there's nothing else to listen to but the slow breathing of the body beside him, asleep.

* * *

In the morning the colour of the world is unclear and the edges of the room dissolve into darkness, like a partly-developed Polaroid print.

"Alright?" Jeremy asks as soon as he spies James rubbing at his just-opened eyes in his peripheral vision. He aims to cover the feeling of dread that runs through his stomach at the realisation that James never returned to his own room, that they spent the night _here_ sleeping in the same bed, so he leans over for a kiss. James pulls away.

"I've got terrible morning breath," James says quietly, even though that's never stopped them before.

"Last night. See stars?" Jeremy asks instead, sure-of-himself and louche.

"It was...yeah, it was fucking amazing Jez." Jeremy can't for the life of him decipher the look on James's face. "I'm not sure if it should have been, um, that good. I always told myself if I saw _this_ as more important than...it's not right that Richard doesn't know about us!" he finishes somewhat desperately.

"Do you really think he doesn't?"

"I think I should leave."

"Well, you _do_ need to get back-"

"No, I mean _leave_. Stop this. You've...you've got Richard, now. You said you won't break away from him."

"I haven't 'got Richard now'. As a matter of fact, we haven't done anything for a while." Jeremy is staring at the crumpled bedclothes, wishing that he was less naked and willing his voice to never rise like that again. "What I mean to say is, I think I need...I need both of you."

"None of us _need_ each other. Don't be ridiculous." There's a savage quality in James's voice that echoes in the pristine room, and Jeremy feels him quietly slipping away.

"James." James has just said that this wasn't a compulsion. Jeremy has always thought of it exactly as such, half-justified it that way; doesn't know what he can possibly say now. "James, fuck me?"

But the world has heard the word _fuck_ too many times now, everywhere. It's lost its edge. It doesn't mean very much anymore.

"I've got to learn to want neither of you," James says, twisting the edge of the white sheet around his fingers. "I told Richard the other night to avoid me for a while."

"Why?"

"It's _wrong_ , this," James seethes, looking at Jeremy like he’s clueless. "How often do you think about that? As often as me? And the only response you've got to make me forget is that. Fucking. Can't do that forever."

There are few threats that will stop them falling for each other, over and over - discovery perhaps, or sudden hatred, or something unprecedented shocking them into morality - but, for now, James is calling time.

He climbs out of bed and grabs his clothes, quickly making himself decent by putting on his shirt and jeans. Jeremy stays where he is. "Bye, Jez. See you soon, I suppose."

"Sodding bastard," Jeremy quietly tells the room as the door creaks shut. "You're the one with the least reasons."

* * *

Richard had always known Jeremy would ask him again eventually; had sensed the request was coming ever since James and Jeremy's coolness towards each other, after an overnight stay they'd had for filming a couple of weeks ago.

"One rule," he tells Jeremy, his voice casual. "No questions."

Jeremy leans down and kisses Richard, their lips locking together with a magnetic pull. The rush that runs through Richard's body reminds him of smoking after a too-long withdrawal. Perhaps this is because Jeremy, like always, tastes of cigarette.

This won't be the last time, Richard thinks. Something pulls them into each other as they embrace - an additional, gratifying level of hedonism this time around.

"Follow me," Jeremy says, his tone brooking no argument.

In their arrangement, Richard had been revelling in being allowed to control Jeremy; now, Jeremy's ordering him around again, a more traditional balance.

Richard doesn't say anything, just raises his eyebrows and wishes that the noise the heels of his cowboy boots make on concrete wasn't so loud. He feels like a whore. He feels empty. Soon, following Jeremy's quieter footsteps, he reaches where his Mustang is parked - a deserted level of the building's underground car park.

"What the hell are you doing?" Richard asks of Jeremy's sudden halt.

"Lean against the door."

"No." A pause. "I'm not going to just go along with what you say."

"You already have. You followed me when I told you to, didn't even question it. And remember the first time?"

Richard starts, like he always does whenever context is mentioned. _It's sex_ , he wants to tell himself, _just sex_.

"What do you want, Richard?"

"You. I want to fuck you." Behind the 'f' sound is a sharp, menacing whisper. Richard clenches his teeth as he looks up at Jeremy.

"No." Jeremy's voice is low and gritty. "I let you fuck me when I still had...no, I prefer the other way." Richard remembers when Jeremy had the upper hand; remembers the first time, when he could blame the cold for making his knees shake.

Richard feels the sharp line of his hipbones hit the metal of the Mustang, his cock pressing painfully against the body of the car. He can smell Jeremy behind him over the scent of tyre rubber and new petrol.

The palm of Jeremy's hand rests across Richard's back for a moment, before moving downwards and across the curve of his arse. In a matter of seconds, their jeans are down and their pricks are out. Jeremy spits into his hand and minimally prepares Richard before entering him.

It's very quick, only a few thrusts before Jeremy is biting down on Richard's shoulder as he comes. Then Jeremy turns him around and jerks him to orgasm, his cries echoing off the walls. The amplification makes him feel flushed with embarrassment.

"Was that...are you...?" Jeremy is panting.

"No questions, remember?"

No answers, either.

* * *

Jeremy and Richard touch each other all the time and don't ever appear to notice; their arms often brush when reaching over for the same thing. And then there are the smiles and the friendly bickering, in the studio and out of it.

"You carry on with the 'husband and wife routine' then," scowls James later on that same day of filming as he watches them organising the next stealthy meeting right in front of him like they don't even care anymore. "I'll be fine."

Richard looks shocked and irritated in equal measure, and James feels a slight swell of triumph, for he used the phrase on purpose. Jeremy and Richard don't want to think of their wives when they are together, and James knows this.

He's always maintained that a threesome wouldn't work. But how they are now does not work either. James realises that Jeremy and Richard have probably already talked without him and agreed to it and thought about what it would be like, and he feels a desperate, panicky jealousy shoot through his chest.

There is a tiny voice inside his head that sounds, James realises, remarkably like Richard Hammond's.

 _What's the worst that can happen, May? Come on. You only live once._

* * *

It's another night of staying in another chain hotel, Richard not there because of impending filming commitments at Dunsfold that are solely his, and Jeremy and James are standing outside upon some fenced-in wooden decking, company-branded garden furniture set upon its surface.

"Jeremy?" begins James, tentative. "I think...what you said when we were arguing in my kitchen...I think I might like to try us. All three of us."

When Jeremy nods instead of answering with the expected quip or snark, James considers that he has truly thought about the options, the difficulties, the potential fallout. "OK," Jeremy says. "OK. We'll come round to yours next weekend. And if we end up doing nothing more than talking, that's...fine. For now."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that this chapter includes references to Richard's accident.

James gets the call at twenty past six in the evening, just as he's making a sandwich and trying to think of something witty to write about in the middle of what had been a rather dull week for motoring journalism.

He hears the full account as he is sucking blood from his finger - he's always been a bit clumsy with knives - and bites down on the broken skin, for strength.

* * *

Time for the next few months moves forward in moments, snapshots.

* * *

"How is he?" James is looking at the floor of the waiting room, hair hiding his face, and it reminds Jeremy of what James was like when he met him for the first time. He hates the futile nostalgia of it.

"I don't...no-one will bloody explain everything to me. Mindy's in there at the moment. I don't want to intrude."

"No," says James, measured. "We shouldn't do that."

There is a pause. They are standing, and James looks stark and serious against the sterile hospital wall. Jeremy, in the fluorescent lights, feels old.

"It should have been me, not him," mutters James, not quite meeting Jeremy's eyes. "We...we were talking about filming schedules, and I told Andy I couldn't make the date because of the wine programme. It should have been me."

"Don't be so resolutely _you_ ," says Jeremy, with choked vehemence. "It shouldn't've been _anyone_."

* * *

"Can I come over?" Jeremy says to James, over the phone. Then his voice drops in tone, and James hears the sound of a door closing. "I need to get out of here for a bit. I keep seeing my kids and thinking about his kids, and - for fuck's sake James, the last thing I spoke to him about before...I was telling him what you told me outside that stupid Travelodge...oh _fuck_."

"Yeah, sure. Come over," says James. "But I don't think I'm up to much."

* * *

The first thing to come from Jeremy's mouth when James lets him though the door of his quiet house is an enquiry as to where Sarah is.

"Out," is James's short and vague reply.

"And you two are-"

"Fine. Same as we always were. Thank you very much for asking."

"Can I stay the night?"

"Yes, I suppose. Separate beds."

Jeremy frowns. "Of course."

* * *

The next morning, Jeremy complains about the lack of milk, so James offers to go out and get some from the Tesco Metro at the end of his road. By the time James returns, Jeremy is just getting off his mobile.

"How is he?" asks James as he sets the carton down on the counter.

"Still not right, but better." Jeremy infuses the reply with double meaning, and moves in closer, something indescribably tender in his eyes.

"Is this is a good idea?" Jeremy is not touching James, but the intention is clear, hanging in the air.

"It never was. Doesn't mean we'll stop."

James could never put up much of a fight to that tone, all gruffness and truth.

They lose themselves the only way they know how. They jerk each other off with hollow strokes, trying to let base pleasure blot out strange and frustrating pain, even if just for a moment.

It has never been in their natures to discuss it, and this time is no different. They both know what the other needs, because it is the same for both of them. They both ignore the pull, the strange force they feel that is nothing to do with orgasm, because they cannot deal with it this time around. Not when things are like this, so raw and tabloid and grim.

* * *

"How is he?" asks James yet again as Jeremy enters his kitchen and immediately grabs a bottle of beer from where James stores them, on the floor next to the washing machine, lined up in precise, brown rows. He's been spending too much time here recently - nearly as much as Sarah even.

"He's good, actually. Not bad at all. He loves that Lego set you gave him, the stupid tit." James watches Jeremy's expression for a moment, and to his surprise sees a look of quiet reverence.

"How's this going to go, when...?" For a moment, Jeremy looks confused as James tails off, but then Jeremy's expression changes to 'don't fucking talk about this now'.

He walks towards James, and pushes him against the kitchen counter. pressing into him and kissing him slow and steady and strong. James can taste the beer.

They are entangled for breathy, hour-long minutes. They aren't aroused; they are wanting and feeling like they're missing what holds them together. Even when their joints begin to ache, they don't let go.

Eventually, Jeremy has to leave, get back to his family. He looks tired as he slams the door.

* * *

James watches Jeremy hug Richard on camera on his first show back since the accident. James intends to embrace him too, but then he remembers Richard's being with Jeremy and all the waiting, and he can't deal with the emotions that would come from such an intimacy, so he shakes Richard's hand instead. Jeremy laughs to cover the awkwardness, but it's fucking awful with everyone watching, half-amused. Sometimes James covets that ability Jeremy and Richard both have for simple, easy touch so much that he fucking _aches_.

He doesn't end up hugging Richard later in the day either, but after they've got all the studio footage for that week's show the two men stand together for a few moments. They listen to each other's breathing - relieved and upset and alive - they are wound up inside themselves. They agree to meet in the pub in twenty minutes and walk away.

* * *

Eventually James and Jeremy's hidden-by-blokeishness over-protectiveness of Richard fades. Their conversations are almost back to the way they used to be now, a dynamic that they've missed terribly.

"You're writing a book about it?" James asks one morning when the three of them are poring over script ideas for future series' in the Dunsfold portakabin office.

"Kids' school won't pay for itself," replies Richard, only half joking. "'It's not just for the money," he continues somewhat awkwardly. "I really want to do it."

"I don't see any problem with it," says Jeremy, not bothering to look up from what he's reading, the pair of glasses he loathes wearing sliding slowly down the bridge of his nose.

"I didn't say I had a problem-" James retorts.

" _Richard Hammond: My Story_ ," Jeremy drawls. "It'll sell brilliantly. Under-sexed housewives up and down the country will love it. Maybe you'll get a deal to promote a supermarket in a cheesy advert. Fame, dizzying heights of."

"You're just jealous," Richard says.

Jeremy snorts. "Jealous of someone who has to supplement their income?

Richard gesticulates with a jerky hand movement. "It's not for the money."

Jeremy looks up at him.

"...for the most part."

"Will it be all your very own very special work?" asks Jeremy sarcastically.

"We'll. I'm getting Mindy to write the bits that I can't remember or _was in a coma for_ -"

"Make sure you get her to write plenty about what happened to the car, won't you?" Jeremy replies. Richard glares at him, though more out of a reflex to respond somehow than genuine indignation.

"Make sure you ask the ghost to dedicate it to us, won't you?"

"Hey, come on, James. He can write. He's got a column in _The Mirror_."

"Better than writing for _The Sun_ ," James mutters.

"And this coming from _The Telegraph_ 's champion rambler, you great poncing Thatcherite..." Jeremy says.

Richard's eyes flick across for a moment to a thoughtful James and a retaliating Jeremy as he paces into the next room, and finds himself thinking of hard nails digging into soft flesh.

* * *

James knows by now that he will invariably want both of them; he's accepted it. As soon as he decides that, yes, he has this desire but he's perfectly capable of controlling his own actions, thank-you-very-much, the world conspires against him. Jeremy starts talking to him daily in the tone of voice that makes his body _tremble_ with the worst kind of longing, and Richard's stupid new longer hair is perpetually dishevelled, like he's just been kissed and held and filled by someone who's desperate. Every time James forgets a line and looks over to him, his heartbeat jolts. He thinks of Richard's clothes in a corner, his hair in total disarray, his lips reddened and his face set against a pale background of crumpled bedsheets.

Then Jeremy speaks once more, and James can avert his eyes without being noticed, but he cannot cover his ears.

How did it come to this?


	8. Chapter 8

_Maybe Jeremy and Richard are already back together._

James wishes he could put the thought down to paranoia, but he tends to hold himself to the side of Richard and Jeremy's boisterous interplay so he can't know for sure. _Subtlety isn't a strong point for either of them_ , he tells himself, concentrating on making sure he isn't tricked by his jealousy into thinking he _needs_ them.

* * *

Wanting what you shouldn't have is a lot harder to deal with when you _could_ have it.

He might have pushed them away, but Jeremy and Richard had been his friends for years and he missed their company when they weren't filming _Top Gear_ together. Hankering after some familiarity in a life that was becoming increasingly busy - the new presenting jobs weren't distraction from temptation of course, just opportunities he wasn't going to say no to - James invites his two co-presenters round to his for the evening.

Always automatically closer, Richard and Jeremy are sitting on James' sofa, while James is seated in an armchair. Jeremy has been staring at Richard's open shirt collar all day. James wonders whether Richard has noticed.

Richard asks to see a particular old copy of _Autotrader_ , and so James goes upstairs to retrieve it from a box he keeps in one of the spare bedrooms. "The last thing you need is another car Hammond," he begins when he eventually re-enters the sitting room, "but you could do a lot worse than the seventy-seven..."

James promptly stops talking because Jeremy is kissing Richard, and James can clearly see their live-wire connection. He almost leaves, so strong is the flash of futility that runs through him. How can they need him?

He doesn't leave, though. A heavy gravity keeps him rooted to the familiar, carpeted floor as a flush prickles at the back of his neck and burns down the line of his spine.

Richard shifts against Jeremy, clutching him tight. The noises they make are quiet enough to be hard for James to hear.

Eventually, they break apart and, realising he's been staring in a painfully obvious manner, James determinedly watches his knees, wishing for the ground to swallow him whole.

"Right then. I'll just...go."

"If it hasn't worked just the two of us over the past however-many-years, why will it now?" Jeremy says. "Don't be a prat, James." James looks up and Jeremy is looking at him like there's nothing to worry about. "We need you. Always remember that."

"You've just spent the last however-many-minutes with Hammond while I was upstairs."

"Does that matter?" Jeremy replies, exasperated.

James considers the situation, and realizes that they've finally worn the edges off each other; said all there is to say. He steps forward to meet Richard on the sofa.

"Well, how do we - I mean, who goes next?" asks Richard, his voice coming out breathy and scratchy.

"We're hopeless at this," James says.

"Hopeless," replies Richard. "Useless. It shouldn't be allowed."

James clumsily drops to his knees and tugs at Richard's bottom lip with his teeth before kissing him deeply, properly. They haven't done this for a couple of years now - more than that, even; the kiss is like re-opening an old wound and James feels his heart race from the contact. The noises Richard makes are gratifying because James now knows he can still coax them out of him.

When James breaks off the kiss, he looks over at Jeremy and sees him smiling smugly, but then Jeremy had always known. Richard has not moved his hand from where it sits on Jeremy's inner thigh.

"So, you two," Richard begins, looking between James and Jeremy. "No new ground to cover here, I suppose."

"So you did know," James says.

"Thought you must've done." Richard dares them with the gleam in his eyes. "I want to see you."

James looks across at Jeremy, unsure, and Jeremy rolls his eyes. "You daft sod," he mutters before grabbing James by the shoulders and almost forcing their bodies together as they kiss, all teeth clashing and tongues and fire.

They eventually break apart, and Richard looks as if he hasn't even blinked. "I didn't realise."

"It's the three of us," says Jeremy. "All three of us. It always fucking has been."

James steels himself. "I want both of you," he says. "Or neither."

Jeremy nods at him, then Richard.

"Bedroom," Richard says hoarsely

Richard's eyes fall shut as Jeremy murmurs something softly in his ear. James feels an eager curl of warmth in his stomach, just from the anticipation.

They go upstairs to James's bedroom, touching and kissing as they remove each other's clothes, and it's far from hesitant this time.

James takes in the sight of Richard's torso as Richard takes off his t-shirt; the feeling of Jeremy's hands on his own pale legs as his trousers are removed; the soft _clunk_ of Jeremy's belt buckle hitting the substantial pile of clothes in the corner.

It has been a while since James has tasted the inside of Richard's thighs, but it has never felt better. Richard's fingers, shaking slightly, trace lines across James's bare back. James stays forward with Richard's open legs pressing against him as Jeremy slides his lips over Richard's shoulder from behind.

James feels a shudder travel down Richard's spine as Jeremy wraps his fingers around Richard's cock. James has always loved to see Richard shaking with need.

James and Jeremy lean over Richard's shoulder and share a warm, lingering, breathless kiss.

"Right," says Jeremy, voice hoarse once he's broken away from James. "OK." For a second he looks so serious and grave, so needy.

James fumbles around in a drawer, reaches for a foil packet and a plastic bottle and hands them to Richard.

James moves to sit against the headboard, his legs wantonly open as he watches Jeremy's large hands reach around Richard's sides, manoeuvring him into the middle of the bed. Richard leans on his forearms, his legs bent and spread either side of Jeremy.

Richard looks up at James through his fringe, and smiles just a fraction. James feels his cock twitch and closes his eyes for a moment, concentrating, to stop himself from ending all of this too soon.

When he opens his eyes again, it's to witness Jeremy reach for the tube of lubricant then open Richard up with expertise and a certain degree of care.

James realises that three people allows for a new perspective. He can see Jeremy's finger entering Richard, can see Richard buck and moan. He sees with perfect clarity Jeremy's cock sinking into Richard and he wants to cry out in second-hand pleasure, but instead his mouth can only fall open, soundless.

When Richard leans forward and clumsily takes James's cock in his mouth, the edges of James's vision blur momentarily, and this time, he does hear himself moan. His hands helplessly clench at the sheets and a slight shock bubbles through him when he feels one of Jeremy's hands cover his.

James hears Jeremy's balls slapping against Richard's arse as Richard swirls his tongue over James's cockhead, taking him in deep in his mouth. James jumps as Richard's teeth catch slightly; Jeremy is pounding deep and hard into Richard and Richard groans.

Jeremy pants as he comes inside Richard, his eyes closed. Richard slips his tongue over the dip on the underside of James's cock before sucking hard, and James comes down Richard's throat, thighs shaking.

Richard's cheeks are flushed deep red. Jeremy pulls his head back roughly and kisses him before leaning over and kissing James just as fervently, his touch tight against the line of James's neck.

Jeremy moves to James' side, rolling James' nipples between his fingers before moving his hands down.

"You two. Christ, that was...I've wanted to see that for so long," says Jeremy, his voice rough. "Been waiting for this for years. Just...didn't realise."

Richard puts on a condom before moving to join Jeremy in preparing James for penetration. His free hand grips James' shoulder to secure the world around them.

Richard spreads James's legs, the head of his cock nudging James's entrance.

"Hurry the fuck up, Hammond," James growls.

And then Richard's inside James and thrusting quickly towards his own release. James feels deliciously filled, and it's more than enough to cause his head to fall back as he moans, exposing the line of his neck. Jeremy leans in, licking and gently biting underneath James's ear and along his jawline. As Richard at last finds his release, all James can think of is that this might well be as close as they'll ever be.

* * *

Afterwards they're lying close enough together to feel the heat of each other's skin.

This is life, James thinks, as he lies awake with his eyes closed, listening to Jeremy and Richard talking and laughing beside him. This is what life is most of the time - not great arching themes of loss and gain or perfect happiness, but the feeling of cotton sheets underneath fingertips, the dull glare of a room lit only by a single shaded lamp.

It's taken years, far too many years of fucking around and fucking things up, for them to work this all out. It wouldn't be easy, even now. But it would be worth it.

Jeremy and Richard's conversation ends, and Jeremy turns off the bedside light.

"Was this inevitable?" asks Richard after some time; James had thought he and Jeremy had fallen asleep.

"Yes," James replies, staring at the ceiling. "Well," he continues, "the three of us."

"We're greater than the sum of our parts," Richard giggles, sounding almost giddy as Jeremy fumbles around to give James a quick, lazy snog.

"Didn't a TV reviewer say that about us once?" says James once Jeremy has pulled away.

"After they'd seen _Brainiac_ ," offers Jeremy.

"Ha fucking ha," Richard retaliates, making the duvet shift by playfully punching Jeremy in the arm just as James shuts his eyes once more.

It's true. They are not thirds, but halves - three halves together making more than a whole.


End file.
